on building an anarchist grade school system

on building an anarchist grade school system

feb 4, 2011

written by jessica murray

"they hate you if you're clever and they despise a fool,
till you're so fucking crazy you can't follow their rules."
	- john lennon, 1970

      it's 6:00 PM on a wednesday evening in july and mary jane is just getting ready for her first day of grade 4. her mom works an evening shift as a waitress, so she attends classes in the evening at the local elementary school, which is open 24 hours a day - just like all elementary schools are now. while there are no schedules or set times, mary jane is expected to be at school for a total of eight hours a day, five days a week. she signs in when she arrives and signs out when her mom picks her up after work. rather than supper, this family has breakfast; mom is just thankful that she gets to see mary jane during the week as she wasn't able to see her youngest child very often at that age due to her evening shift.

      mary jane has decided to spend the first half of her evening reading an english book and the second half getting a head start on her math homework. the new curriculum allows her to study these different subjects independently in the way, order and length of time that she feels comfortable with. when she's done her work, she'll bring it to the teacher and begin the next task in her curriculum list, which was presented to her when she jumped grade levels the previous week. when she was in grade three, she put the math off because she doesn't like it so much....this time she's going to stay on top of it because she knows she'll eventually have to do it correctly in order to jump to the next grade level. mary jane is a conscientious student; she's working on her third grade level since september.

      the night classes are a little bit sparse, but mary jane does have a group of friends that she sees every day. some of them are still in grade three because they weren't able to keep up with mary jane, others are further along through grade four than she is. one of the kids a little further along is a boy that she likes. mary jane doesn't want to get too far behind him, so she makes sure to keep up with her schoolwork. one of the kids that's still in grade three is her best friend, ever since kindergarten. mary jane has been trying to convince her to do more homework so that she can keep up with her.

      there's one boy in the class that works really, really slowly but always does a fantastic job when he finally finishes his work. the teachers always show his work to the rest of the class and comment upon the attention to detail that he demonstrates, especially on art assignments. he's been in grade three for two years and is finally just about done. some of the other kids make fun of him, but mary jane thinks he's really interesting.

      there's also a group of bad kids in the corner that don't do any school work at all. one of them has been in grade two for four years! the teacher always says that whether he wants to do his homework or not is his choice but that he'll be stuck in grade two until he does, whether his father likes it or not. she also tells him that he's almost old enough to go into one of the big kids classes, and they'll make fun of him if he's only in grade two when he gets there.

      sometimes, mary jane has to write tests. she doesn't write them with the other students, she writes them whenever she decides that she's ready to. the teacher says that there's a computer program that writes the tests, so there's no point in asking the older kids what the questions on them are. when she was in grade three, she had to write her last math test twice because she only had 77% the first time and she had to get 80% to pass. one of her friends had to write it three times! the teacher always tells her that it's ok if she doesn't get 80% the first or second time, it just means she has to study a bit more.

      mary jane has heard her older brother talk about the days when teachers used to stand in front of the classroom and everybody had to do the same thing all at the same time, but she can barely believe it. to mary jane, teachers are just people who mark homework and answer questions about stuff. why would the teacher want to stand in front of the class and say stuff? what could she say to all of the kids that are in the class that would make sense to all of them? the old system seems really, really silly to mary jane; she's glad she's allowed to work by herself.

http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/thoughts/social/anarchistgradeschool.html

Conversations I Have With Myself

(edit: this text was isolated from a much earlier written and much longer passage and stored in it's own file on 30/09/2013 for probably forever forgotten reasons - 07/08/2019)

I tried to explain to him that you can’t eat steel. You can taste steel, sure, but eating it is impossible. First of all, you could never digest it. If you were to attempt to eat a platter of steel and you were somehow able to chew and swallow it, it would simply languish in your gut for eons. The steel in your stomach would likely outlast your own existence. 

Yet, what if you were able to outlast your own stomach? This was his retort.

While it is true that in such a scenario - and we still need to ignore the logistics behind the physics of actually consuming steel – it would not be as devastating to consume steel as would be initially assumed, the value of consuming steel is still up for debate. Yes, it is true that the ability to discard the bodily shell and move existing memories and thought processes (and even such a thing brings with it severe logistical concerns) into an entirely new place of habitation would render the inevitability of an impending stomach disaster virtually irrelevant, but of what value would it be to consciously attack one’s own digestive system?

I have answered a question with a question, and he claims that this is bad form.

Well, then, I relent. If we are to take immortality into account then I suppose I have no further objection to the consumption of steel. Yet, you have not explained the logistics behind your proposal. How precisely do you propose that one goes about consuming steel? A steak knife seems to be of little value.

Well, you’d have to melt it first, obviously. You’d just pop it in the oven for a while…

But this is ridiculous! The oven in your home is not capable of melting steel!

Maybe your oven is not capable of melting steel, but mine certainly is. It seems to me like you need to buy a new oven.

Right. So I can melt steel. What do I do with the steel once it is melted?

You’d drink it, obviously.

No! Never! I will not consume steel at all and will certainly not consume it when it is in a liquid state. It would burn right through me and kill me instantly. What is wrong with you?

Concerned with the bodily shell again…when are you going to ignore your physical existence? You don’t really exist in any kind of physical state except as a fragile and tenuous temporary host; your body has no value. You understand that perfectly well, and yet you continue to maintain this childish obsession with your own physical well being because you’re morbidly afraid of pain. Enough already. Be a man and consume the goddamned steel and be done with it.

This conversation is over. You will never convince me to consume molten steel.

Pussy.

That’s it….I’m going to sleep.

Right, you can’t beat me so you let me take over. You’re such a fucking defeatist. What did I do in my past life to get stuck with such a lame host? Turn that music down and listen to me!

the jessica murray aimless drifter scholarship

troll target: carleton university senior management
troll method: mass email 

a proposal for a new scholarship program designed to help floaters continue to float

august 1, 2010

written by jessica murray

"lots of people seem to think i'm lazy.
i don't mind; i think they're crazy!"
	- john lennon, 1966

      the floater. we're an odd bunch, us. absurdly intelligent, idealistic, over-read, highly capable and yet, through most of our lives, uninterested in performing well in school or in succeeding in the world of business. most of us end up floating because, at some point, we walked down the wrong path and decided that we enjoyed being lost...

      while we will likely never cure cancer, become prime minister, construct a perpetual motion machine, eliminate nationalism or even succeed in holding a 9-5 office job for more than a few weeks without getting fired, we have plenty to offer in the areas of art, music, literature, abstract mathematics and philosophy. yet, we are floaters; we could not, by definition of a floater, have realized this at the age of 19. it must be something that becomes clear somewhere midway through adulthood.....

      our scholarship program currently has two primary purposes. the first is to act as a means of identification; the kids with the scholarships are the best kids. this is obvious and requires no further explanation. the second purpose is to help smart yet disadvantaged kids out of poverty by giving them a serious opportunity to jump socio-economic classes. this is also obvious...

      ....should we consider a third purpose, namely one based on the idea of an expansion of the welfare state to help certain kinds of older students define incentives to get their lives moving? should we set up a limited scholarship program designed specifically to help certain kinds of aimless adults - drifters, floaters - stay within the scholastic system essentially indefinitely under the argument that going to school is essentially the only thing that these individuals are capable of doing at a level of excellence and that they still nonetheless need some incentives to help get them focused?

      while i have outlined a set of general principles here, it's probably best that i jump right into the proposal.

the jessica murray aimless drifter scholarship

qualifications

- the student must be between the ages of 29 and 34.
- the student must have completed at least one degree but no more than three degrees.
- the student must not have completed more than two degrees in the same subject.
- the student must not have completed a phd.
- the student must have completed at least 30 university credits, or 60 university courses, in total.
- of those 30 credits, at least 5 must be in the requirements of some b. mathematics, 5 in the requirements of some b. science and 5 in the requirements of some b. arts.
- the student must have taken courses in at least 10 different disciplines.
- the student must have an average between 70% and 90%.
- the student must be able to at least display flashes of brilliance.
- the student must be able to display long stretches of apathy towards his or her studies.
- the student must be diagnosed with a "controllable psychological concern".

number of candidates

- one candidate will be chosen every year.

awards & benefits

- the length of this scholarship is indefinite subject to the student meeting the conditions outlined in the next section.
- full tuition, books and all other scholastic costs.
- $20,000/yr living expenses, adjusted yearly for inflation to 2010 base levels.
- full medical, dental under a plan similar to that given to professors and staff.
- the student is entitled to one year of "sabbatical" per every ten years.
- if the student lasts ten years within this program, any and all remaining student loan debts will be wiped out by the scholarship.
- after ten years within the program, the student retains the right to modulate between years of teaching and years of studying at will, meaning the student can put the program "on hold" so long as s/he is putting it "on hold" in order to teach.

conditions

- the student must have an average above 90% at the beginning of each subsequent school year (september) in order to retain the scholarship.
- the student must take at least one math course, one science course, one essay-based arts or social science course and one applied arts course per year.
- the student may or may not take courses in the summer.
- the student is required to attend classes and to provide evidence in the form of signatures by the professor of the class at the beginning and ending of the class. this will be checked rigorously and weekly by an officer of the school. failure to attend classes without a good reason will result in immediate termination of the scholarship.
- the student must not use non-prescribed drugs or alcohol between the times of 8:00 AM and 8:00 PM on weekdays and, if found doing so, will be immediately cut off from funding.

      perhaps the change in mindset is a bit more apparent now; this is a scholarship designed to pull old, nihilist, depressed, under-achieving students out of their own oblivion and provide them with some kind of meaning and purpose. it is consequently, fundamentally, a means of social welfare, not a loan to enhance opportunity or an attempt to differentiate the best from the pack, and so a very different approach to both scholastics and to scholarships.

i propose that the scholarship is implemented beginning in september, 2010 and that the first candidate is......me. great! yet, who is going to fund my noble construction?

http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/thoughts/trolls/floater.html

demo #4: neglected

weak lyrics through most of the track, but i actually sort of dig the musical part of the song. and i like the lyrics in the bridge.

the track is called neglection, i guess that's what i was feeling at the time, and it was probably a fairly common state for mid-90s teenagers who were raised by their television sets and never really developed much of a sense of family. but i could rename it depression, and replace the words throughout.

i didn't re-record this. i think i wanted to rewrite the lyrics and never did.

recorded in sept, 1996. remastered sept 30, 2013.

Hey.

From: the surviving uncle
To: <dfhldgdhdlhfdla@gmail.com>

Just wondering how you're doing.

installation file:
office2003.iso